The recent cover of the French edition of Vogue magazine caused considerable controversy, and it was not because of the all too typical, female model featured in a sensual pose. Instead, it was the fact that the model this time was a 10 year-old girl.

The headline of an article appearing on JewishJournal.com announced that, “Vogue Blurs the Line between Fashion & Pedophilia with 10 Year Old Model,” and the article’s author, Ilana Angel, rightly noted that, “A 10 year old is not able to distinguish between playing dress up in mommy’s make-up and high heels, and proving a sexual aid to pedophiles.” How true!

But this is only one, extreme example of the way our kids are being sexualized. How many children watch MTV and VH1, mimicking the moves and memorizing the lyrics of the latest song by Britney Spears or Lady Gaga, having no clue that the moves they are making and the words they are mouthing are sexually charged. These kids are too young to have any understanding of sexuality, and yet it is no secret to the TV execs that these same children are a major part of the viewing audience.

And was anyone really surprised when Miley Cyrus outgrew Hannah Montana and discovered pole dancing instead? What are her youthful followers to make of her now? Perhaps they’ll follow her lead? Perhaps they’ll ask mom and dad for a pole of their own at home?

But there’s more. There is the sexualizing of our children in the public schools, and I’m not talking about sex-ed classes. I’m talking about teaching gay history to elementary school children, as now mandated by law in California with the recent passing of SB 48, thereby introducing sexual categories to little ones who haven’t the slightest clue what sexual orientation is, let alone have the ability to wrap their minds around “bisexual” or “transgender.”

To add insult to injury, parents will have no right to opt their kids out of these classes, a hard lesson parents in other states have already learned, where the courts have sided with the schools rather than the parents. Already in Massachusetts, a couple was so upset with this state-sponsored sexualizing of their first grader that they took their battle to court, where Judge Mark Wolff of the US Court of Appeals ruled that the schools have a greater responsibility to teach “diversity” than to honor the requests of the parents. In other words, “Sorry, moms and dads. We know what is best for your children, and when we decide it’s time to introduce them to ‘diversity’ – our codeword for gay activist curricula – we will do so. You, on your part, have no right to interfere, so don’t even think about it.” (For more details, see Chapter Three of my book A Queer Thing Happened to America.)

What is unique in California is not that gay-themed lessons will be taught to little children. Rather, it is that these lessons will be mandated across the entire state for all schools and all classes, which, of course, will be reflected in the textbooks that will be used. And, as is well known, what happens in California doesn’t stay in California, meaning that the textbooks printed for our most populous state will be used throughout the nation.

In the specific language of SB 48, the bill amended “the Education Code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.” And note that previous bills relating to LGBT issues – including AB 537, AB 1785, AB 394, SB 777, SB 572 – were not enough. SB 48 had to go one step further.

What exactly will this mean? For starters, it will demand that the categories of “gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender” be introduced to six year-olds. I have watched videos of classes taught in different parts of the countries where elementary school children are shown pictures of artists or musicians or politicians or other famous figures and are told, “He (or she) was gay,” as if they had the slightest real concept of what “gay” actually meant. (As I recall, in the early years of elementary school, boys like boys and girls like girls. Does that make all of them “gay”?)

Of course, we are told that introducing this curriculum will reduce bullying of LGBT kids in schools, but the best way to reduce bullying is to teach that bullying is bad rather than gay is good. And does anyone really think that, say, showing kids images of a fat Buddha will stop the bullying of fat kids? More to the point, who gave the public schools the right to sexualize our children?